The Bob Brier book is really amazing, he gives a whole personality to the era and also just enough background to be useful, but not boring. I really enjoyed the book, preferring it to some of his other works. By the way, has anyone read Egyptian Magic by Bob Brier. It is the only major work that I haven't read of his and I was wondering what it was like.

Bob Brier's works are highly intertaining--he is a very good writer, and can hold his readers interest very well.
But you must remember, Si-Amon, that his book concerning the murder of Tutankhamen is only theory. There is no evidence, contrary to what you hear and read, that Tut was murdered. In fact, more and more, I tend to believe that the accident theory is more accurate--that he died as a result of a fall from a chariot. The injuries found on his mummy are more consistant with that idea.
I guess I must admit to a personal dislike of Brier. I think it is wrong of him (or his publishers) to stress his Egyptology. His Masters is in Philosophy, not Egyptology, but this fact is never mentioned in any of his books. Obviously, he has a great love of all things Egypt--as many of us do. I resent his omission to let his readers know that his authority comes from experience, not school.

Hehe. I have almost all of those. Only found my C. Desroches Noblecourt and I have my Tutankhamen: His Tombs and his Treasures by I.E.S Edwards (former keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British museum).

Osiris, I realise that his theories about the murder are merely theories, but in his book on the subject he lays down a great background about the King. it sets the scene for the book and evokes much more about his life than looking at artifact after artifact in gold. That is solely my opinion though, and if you hold a different one so be it. I am just recommending the book I found interesting.

The following is excerpted from Chapter Seven - "The Tomb of Tutankhamen, Number 62 in the Valley of the Kings" - of the author's forthcoming Tombs. Treasures. Mummies. Seven Great Discoveries of Egyptian Archaeology.

Who was Nebkheperure Tutankhamen? From his many depictions found in KV62, young Tutankhamen seems quite familiar to us today. He was apparently a rather handsome youth, despite the obvious idealizations of his various portraits - all of which, nonetheless, even in their variations, are easily recognizable as depicting Tutankhamen and no one else. His mummy suggests that he was a lightly built young man of medium height, whose skull was of the broad-oblong type, large but not excessively so, and that his facial features in life were as refined as his portraits suggest, even though he had the pronounced overbite that was characteristic of his Thutmosid ancestors.

That he was the scion of that ruling house is not really questioned; but exactly who Tutankhamen's parents were is a matter of contention among those Egyptologists who like to debate such matters. An inscription from a monument which had originally stood at Akhetaten - the capital of the Aten Heresy - indicates he was a -King's bodily son, his beloved. But which king? Those scholars who are persuaded that there was a long coregency (up to twelve years) between Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten would like to see the former king as Tutankhamen's parent. Had the "Magnificent" Amenhotep lived into the twelfth year of Akhenaten's seventeen-year reign, and had he fathered a son during the last year of his life, the chronology would work for a nine- or ten-year-old Tutankhamen to have come to the throne following Akhenaten's demise (allowing that Smenkhkare did not rule on his own for two years post-Akhenaten, but rather shared the throne in a coregency from Years 15 to 17 of Akhenaten's reign).

But if Nebmaatre Amenhotep III was the boy-king's father, who would his mother have been? Romantics have offered the enigmatic Sitamen, Amenhotep's daughter who was also his Great Royal Wife, married to him towards the end of his reign, during the period of his three sed-festivals. There is no evidence for this, however, nothing inscriptional or otherwise to link Tutankhamen and Sitamen.

The other candidate most often proposed as the boy-king's mother by Amenhotep III is none other than Great Royal Wife Tiye, a lock of whose hair was found among the KV62 burial goods, housed in a set of coffins, obviously a memento signifying some sort of relationship, probably familial, between Tiye and Tutankhamen. But would she have been too old to have mothered a son in the last year of her royal spouse's life? Amenhotep III himself came to the throne as a minor only ten or twelve years old. In Year 2 he married Tiye, the daughter of non-royal courtiers. Presumably she was his junior by a year or two at the time, making Tiye a bride of ten or twelve. Amenhotep reigned into Year 39, dying at between his forty-ninth and fifty-first year of age, when Tiye herself would have been in her very late forties. Too old to bear a child? Very probably, but not necessarily. There is no way of knowing; but that lock of hair is strong circumstantial evidence.

Those Egyptologists who reject the possibility of a coregency of any length between Amenhotep III and his successor, the majority view, offer Akhenaten himself as Tutankhamen's father, even though the Heretic never claimed paternity for a son, despite his obvious public pride in having produced a brood of six daughters by his Great Royal Wife Nefertiti. The latter is never proposed as Tutankhamen's mother, however. Instead, the candidate most often put forth is Royal Wife Kiya, a shadowy second spouse of Akhenaten, who appears on the monuments of Akhetaten before Years 9 or 10 of Akhenaten's reign. She disappears from the record in Year 11, about the time of Tutankhamen's birth, possibly dying during his delivery - an event which may be depicted in a very badly damaged relief in the Royal Tomb at El Amarna. Who exactly Kiya herself was is unknown. Some have seen her as the Mitannian princess-bride, Tadukepa, known to have been sent to Egypt for a diplomatic marriage at the beginning of Akhenaten's reign. Kiya's name, however, might suggest some affiliation with the courtier family of Akhmin, which seems to have paralleled the Thutmosid royal house for two or three generations, at least, and counted among its members possibly Great Royal Wife Mitumwiya (Amenhotep III+s mother) and certainly royal in-laws Yuya and Thuyu; their daughter, Great Royal Wife Tiye; and their putative son, Ay, who would succeed Tutankhamen on the throne. If Akhenaten was the father of his (second) successor, then Kiya is very likely Tutankhamen's mother.

But, consider two other candidates for the boy-king's parents, who - as far as this writer is aware - have never been proposed before for those roles: King Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare Djoserkheperru and his Great Royal Wife Meritaten!

Who Meritaten was is not disputed. As the eldest daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, the only thing that is uncertain about her is when she would have been born. She is represented as a child on the Aten monuments raised by her father and mother at Waset (Thebes/Luxor) during the first eight years of Akhenaten's reign (prior to removal of the Aten court to the new capital of Akhetaten in Year . Thus, Meritaten may well have been born while her father was still crown-prince. By Akhenaten's Year 11 or 12, she could, therefore, have been as old as fourteen or fifteen, certainly capable of bearing children. From the monuments it is known that she was Great Royal Wife to both Ankhkheperure Neferneferuraten and Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare Djosekheperru (who most probably were one and the same).

But who was Smenkhkare? He either succeeded Akhenaten with an independent reign of one-to-two years, or shared a short coregency with him during the elder king's last years - or was both Akhenaten's coregent and successor, but only wearer of the Double Crown for a maximum of three years. The skeletal remains from Kings' Valley Tomb 55, which are almost certainly his, suggest that Smenkhkare was in his early twenties when he died - although some have estimated the age of death of the individual in question as high as thirty-five years. Even if he was a young as twenty at death, it is unlikely that Smenkhkare was the son of Akhenaten (but chronologically not completely impossible). More probably he was a son of Amenhotep III (by Tiye or Sitamen?) and, thus, Akhenaten+s younger brother. As such, he would have been in line to succeed Akhenaten only if the latter had no son (i.e., Tutankhamen). Thus, since he did succeed his brother, it may be presumed that Tutankhamen was the son of someone other than Akhenaten (allowing that Smenkhkare was not, in fact, a son of the latter, born when he was still crown prince).

It has been commented on by some experts that the cranial morphologies of Tutankhamen and the individual found in KV55 are so similar that they were probably brothers. If both Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen were the sons of Amenhotep III, by the same or different mothers (Tiye and Sitamen), this similarity would be explained: they were brothers. Likewise, if Smenkhkare (improbably) and Tutankhamen (more possibly) were the sons of Akhenaten, they were brothers (although, it is never postulated who Smenkhkare+s mother might have been in such a relationship). But, what if Tutankhamen was the "bodily son" of King Smenkhkare? Would the similar cranial morphology between two brothers (with likely different mothers) be any greater than between a father and his son?

Aside from cranial morphology correspondences between Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen, what else might be cited to relate them as father and son? The name of Akhenaten's coregent appears on several minor objects found in KV62. But, more importantly, there is the matter of the tomb's major pieces of funerary equipage which seem to have once belonged to Smenkhkare and were appropriated and reinscribed for his successor: the quartzite sarcophagus, the gilded and inlaid second coffin, possibly the calcite canopic chest and its portrait-head stoppers, and certainly the solid-gold coffinettes which held Tutankhamen's viscera. When Smenkhkare's burial in the Royal Wadi at Akhetaten was dismantled early in Tutankhamen's reign, for removal to Waset and semi-anonymous reinterment in Kings+ Valley Tomb 55, it seems evident that his kingly Osiride equipage was placed in storage - perhaps with the full intent that it would be reinscribed for his son's eventual use. That Tutankhamen's own demise was premature and unanticipated made it certain that the Smenkhkare materials, ready at hand, were required for that purpose.

Back to Meritaten. There certainly is no inscriptional evidence (known to date) to link her in a mother-son relationship with Tutankhamen. But there certainly exists a piece of "circumstantial" evidence which suggests some sort of special affinity between the boy-king and Akhenaten's eldest daughter. It will be remembered that an ivory writing palette inscribed for Meritaten was found in the Treasury of Tutankhamen's tomb. Since writing palettes belonging to the king, and other writing equipment as well, also were discovered among his grave goods, it would seem that Tutankhamen was not only literate but, in fact, something of a writer himself. It would have been appropriate, then, to have kept the palette belonging to his mother as a memento, a token of the woman who had, perhaps, taught him his own scribal skills in the first place. Certainly this possession of Meritaten+s was left in the tomb in a manner indicating that it was regarded as something special, having been placed between the paws of the Anubis figure atop the portable shrine-chest found positioned in the doorway of the Treasury.

Tutankhamen's parentage probably never will be determined to Egyptologists' satisfaction, and the boy-king will always remain an individual from antiquity about which so much is known, and yet so little.

I saw a program recently that said that Tutankhamun suffed from Clipplefyle's syndrome (it was on T.V I have no idea how to spell it!) that caused the top of his spine to seize up and become immobile.
This might explain the huge number of walking sticks that he is buried with, and may have been connected to his premature death. Infact, there is an inscription with a picture of Tutankhamun leaning on a walking stick with his wife.
Does anyone else know any more about this?

I watched the same program I think. Unfortuneatley it was mostly one of those "Egyptology for the masses" programmes and so highly dubious. I am not doubting it, but it helps if you know the background of the piece. It seems odd though that this has just suddenly got out, you would have thought that it would be pretty obvious from the start. It would explain a lot about the end of the Amarna line though.

I seem to have done it again, I started all cynical and dubious and now as I am finishing what I am writing I have changed my mind completely! I am a confusing poster! lol

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